Mr. William Vernon was a venerable, benevolent-looking man of seventy years of age. His hair was white, his figure slightly stooped, his manner gentle, kindly, plausible. Until the crash came, everyone believed he was the most prosperous man in the city of Dublin. He had three fine private houses--one in Dublin, a seaside residence at Bray, and a castle in Monaghan. His income was believed to be somewhere between twenty and forty thousand a year, and it was believed that he lived well within it. His savings were said to be enormous, and the general conviction was that he could retire in splendour on his money, invested at home and abroad. Now all was confusion and dismay among those connected with him in business. So great was the excitement, two policemen had to be told off to guard the door of the bank. Men and women, too, who were depositors or shareholders, refused to believe the news, and came down to the bank to see with their own eyes confirmation of the report. There, sure enough, were the massive oak, iron-studded doors closed in their faces, never again to be opened. As the hours rolled on, the depth and breadth of the calamity increased steadily. People who were supposed to have had nothing whatever to do with the bank divulged, in the excitement of the moment, the secret that they were shareholders or depositors. The credit of the whole city was shaken. Who could be safe when the great house of Vernon and Son had collapsed? Before nightfall three other large houses had suspended payment. They had gone down into the vortex. Then it began to be realised that not only had the shareholders lost all their money invested in shares, but that every man who, as principal or trustee, held even one of these shares, was liable to the last shilling he had in the world. It had over and over again been suggested by outside shareholders that the business should be formed into a limited company. William Vernon always shook his head at this, and said that if you limit the responsibility you limit the enterprise, and so reduce the profits. They were paying twelve per cent. on capital--did they want to cut down the earnings to eight? He assured them it would cripple the whole concern seriously, and he, for one, would retire from any responsibility if such a course were urged upon him. It had been suggested to him, in advocacy of this scheme, that limiting the company would enormously diminish the risk of the shareholders in case disaster should overtake the bank. He had replied to this with a shrug of his shoulders, a smile of half pity, half amusement, and said: "If you have any fear, why not sell out? If you have any confidence in my word of honour, you need have no occasion for fear." Mr. William Vernon had the reputation of unblemished honour. He was, moreover, an exceedingly pious man, belonging to one of the most rigid forms of dissent. No one questioned his word; no one sold out; and now all were ruined. Mr. Vernon had married late in life. Mrs. Vernon was twenty-five years his junior. His elder daughter, Ruth, was now fifteen years of age; his younger, Miriam, twelve. He had but these two children. Mrs. Vernon was a large, florid, comely woman, who, twenty years ago, when she was married, had been considered a beauty. She was now no longer beautiful. She was a well-favoured matron of forty-five, with an exaggerated notion of the importance of her husband, her children, and herself. He was courteous, insinuating, with a dash of infallibility. She was dignified, not to say haughty, with a great notion of the high position she occupied in the social world. She was not harsh or cantankerous with servants, but she never for one moment allowed them to think they were anything but servants--that is to say, beings of an immeasurably inferior order. During the time Miss Creagh had been in Mrs. Vernon's house as resident governess to her two daughters, the mistress had shown the governess respect in the form of conscious condescension. She had never for a moment allowed anyone to slight Nellie, and even she herself had never slighted her. But, then, she never was by any means genial or cordial, or anything but rigidly polite; and rigid politeness is the perfection of rudeness. Nellie had not, however, been unhappy in that house. She had conceived a great respect for Mr. Vernon, and had grown to love the two children. Ruth was her favourite. The elder girl was flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, fair and pink, with a tendency to sentimental poetry and enthusiasm, and with a most excellent heart. Miriam, on the other hand, was a brunette, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vivacious, invincibly loquacious, with a thorough contempt for everything that was not material to comfort, and with a heart which beat so fast for its own excitements, that it rarely had time to concern itself with anything else. Mr. Vernon had that summer postponed their going to their house at Bray a month beyond the usual time. The crash had not come upon him unexpectedly. He and a few others knew for some time that it could not be avoided, but it might be put off. He was loath to leave Dublin; and as his family never went to Bray without him, he thought it better they should not go now, as if they did it might cause talk. Bray is but half-an-hour or so from Dublin; but he did not like to sleep so far away from the bank, for now important telegrams were coming at all hours of the day and night, and the delay of an hour might hasten the disaster. The immediate cause of the ruin was the failure of a trader in Belfast, who owed the bank considerable sums of money, and had been encouraged by Mr. Vernon to play a risky business on the chance of making large profits. In fact, the relation between the Belfast and Dublin houses would not bear the light of day, and the large profits which, it was said, enabled the Belfast house to pay a fancy price for money, had all been taken out of the capital lent by the bank. The Belfast house had, some years ago, an extraordinary stroke of luck. It legitimately doubled its income in a year. It depended almost wholly on its export trade. It sent most of its goods to India and the Colonies. During the good year it could not manufacture as quickly as it could sell. Then it borrowed in order to increase its manufacturing powers. It built and set up new machinery. It exported more than it had orders for and stored abroad. This went on for some years, the output being in excess of the demands of the prosperous year, the sales less than before the prosperous year. The result of this could be seen--bankruptcy. Nothing else was talked of in Dublin all that day, all that night, in the clubs, in the hotels, between the acts at the theatre, in the private houses, in the tramcars, in the streets. No class seemed to be unaffected by the gigantic catastrophe. Widows and orphans were ruined, trustees rendered penniless. Commercial fabrics which had cost generations to build up, were now tottering to the fall. All this dreadful day Mr. Vernon sat in his study, a large back room on the first floor of his Fitzwilliam Square house. He now fully realised his own position. He had directly ruined hundreds, and indirectly, through them, thousands. For years the bank had practically been in a bankrupt state. For years the fact had been kept secret by means of false balance-sheets. For years the pious, bland William Vernon had been the author of a gigantic fraud. What was coming now to him? An indictment? Imprisonment? Were a common prison and common prison diet coming to him in his seventieth year? All this time that he had been issuing false balance-sheets he had lived in splendour. He had kept his three houses, his horses, his domestic servants, his gardeners, his grooms, his coachmen. He had given dinners which were the talk, the admiration, the envy of Dublin. His wines were the finest. He had a French cook; he had footmen of the shapeliest forms and politest manners. Was he about to have, instead of his three stately houses--the city jail? Instead of his dining-room--a prison cell? Instead of his courteous footman--a gruff turnkey? Instead of cliquot--gruel? Instead of respect, honour, reverence--contumely, scorn, and curses? The present was bad enough. The future looked much worse. He did not allow himself to waste any of his energies in grieving for those who had lost through him. He said to himself: "They speculated and lost. They only lost money. I have lost all the money I once had, all the reputation, and now in my old age it is not unlikely I may lose my liberty. I have done the best I could. Had I reduced my establishment, suspicion would have been aroused at once, and the blow would have come much sooner. If I had earlier exposed the position of the bank, ruin would have come then just as now. If after the first loss in Belfast I sanctioned wild, mad speculation, it was in the desperate hope of recovering what had already been sunken. What I did, I did for the best. O'Donnell will, of course, be the heaviest sufferer, but he has had his twelve per cent. for many years. I dare say he will not be able to save a penny out of his whole fortune. Neither shall I out of mine." Just as he came to the end of these self-justification reflections, these comfortable sophisms, Mrs. Vernon entered the room, dressed for going out. "Going out, Jane?" he cried all in astonishment. "Yes," she said. "The house is so dull, I thought I'd take the brougham and call upon the Lawlors." "Take the brougham," he cried, "and call upon the Lawlors! Don't you know the Lawlors are shareholders in the bank, and that they, too, are ruined?" "But," said Mrs. Vernon, drawing herself up, "the Lawlors were old friends of mine. I knew them before you did. We were children together. They will be glad to see me, although you have been unfortunate in business." "Glad to see you! Woman, they would thrust you out of doors with curses. When people are ruined they do not pay much heed to friendship, nor are they over nice in the way they express their anger. As to the brougham," he said, "I have been stupid not to tell you, but I cannot think of everything. We could never with decency use the brougham, or anything of the sort, again." He threw himself back in his chair and laughed harshly for a few seconds. "I see nothing to laugh at in this disgrace and worry," said his wife, who thought herself the most injured person of all. "I am sure I am very sorry for you, William, when I consider the respectable position, the eminent position you held. I am sure you cannot say I was extravagant, or that I brought up the children extravagantly. You told me yesterday that my five thousand pounds are secured by the marriage settlement. Why should I lose my old friends any more than the money my father gave me when we were married?" "Because," he said, laughing harshly again, "you married what the world will agree to call a fraudulent scoundrel. When I laughed a moment ago at the thought of the brougham, the idea which occurred to me was--it is rather painful. Shall I tell you?" "Yes, you had better tell me, I suppose. Everything is painful now." "Well," he said, "I thought that the next member of the family likely to drive would be myself, and the next vehicle in which I was likely to drive would be a Black Maria." "Black Maria, William," she said. "I do not understand you." "Black Maria, my dear," he explained, "is slang for a prison van. What is the matter, Jane? You seem weak. Help, outside there, Mrs. Vernon has fainted." The door opened. A footman entered. "If you please, sir, the brougham is at the door." The old man started and looked up, became suddenly pallid. "What did you say, James?" "I said, sir, that the brougham was at the door." "Ha! ha! ha! As I live, James, I thought you said the Black Maria. Fetch Mrs. Vernon's maid instantly. The mistress has fainted."